THE CAPTAIN’S LONELY CORNER
There’s hardly a year left for the next assembly election, and Punjab chief minister Capt. Amarinder Singh can ill afford to be seen stranded alone in a political crisis. On April 10, the Punjab and Haryana High Court quashed the SIT (special investigation team) report in a 2015 case on the desecration of the Guru Granth Sahib. Seen by many in the state as a travesty of the judicial process, the issue has snowballed into a political crisis for the chief minister. The latest to join the band of critics are two of his confidants—Congress state unit chief Sunil Jakhar and cooperatives minister Sukhjinder Randhawa. Both of them resigned from their posts on April 26.
The chief minister has rejected their resignations for now. Amarinder had ticked them off for making public statements that the state government had mishandled the case. Meanwhile, his usual baiters in the Congress, cricketerturned-neta Navjot Singh Sidhu, Rajya Sabha MP Pratap Singh Bajwa and Ludhiana MP Ravneet Bittu are busy taking potshots. These are all powerful leaders the Captain can’t afford to ignore—Sidhu has mass appeal among young Sikh voters; Bajwa is a former PCC chief and five-time cabinet minister; and Bittu is the grandson of assassinated chief minister and fallen hero, Beant Singh.
On April 27, Amarinder reacted to Sidhu’s charges, alleging that the latter was once again building a case for his exit from the Congress party.
In all this, the continued silence of the party high command must be worrying the chief minister. The party’s top leadership has mostly ignored his complaints, especially against Bajwa (indeed rewarding him with more responsibilities), which has only further weakened Amarinder’s grip on the party’s state unit. Meanwhile, Jakhar in a statement has blamed the SIT fiasco on “overconfidence and a lack of political supervision”.
The desecration incident was first reported at a gurudwara in village Bargari of Faridkot district, and was followed by 122 similar incidents in nearby Ferozepur, Amritsar, Ludhiana and Tarn Taran districts in October-November 2015. It’s a sensitive issue for Sikhs everywhere, especially after the police firing on protesters at Kotkapura town killed two people. A section of the Sikh community sees the hand of Gurmeet Ram Rahim Singh, the jailed chief of the Dera Sacha Sauda sect in Sirsa, and his Dalit Sikh followers, in the incidents. Reports of the desecration of the holy book came after the Akal Takht jathedar (the highest temporal seat for the Sikhs) accepted the apology of the controversial leader for a 2007 incident, where he had allegedly worn clothes similar to those donned by Guru Gobind Singh. That decision had led to violent protests against the Dera chief, and the spiral of anger among the Panthic (religious Sikhs) voters later scorched then chief minister Parkash Singh Badal and his son Sukhbir Badal of the Shiromani Akali Dal (SAD).
In the 2017 assembly poll, Amarinder had called out the Badals as the perpetrators and vowed to put them on trial along with the cops who had opened fire. But now, with the SIT report falling flat in the high court, his own partymen are baying for the Captain’s blood. Immediately after returning to power, Amarinder had constituted an inquiry panel under retired high court judge Ranjit Singh. The judge’s report called the police firing “unwarranted” and also indicted Sumedh Singh Saini, the top cop during the Badal regime, among others. The report had also hinted at the role of top functionaries of the Dera Sacha Sauda in the incidents. In the past, Amarinder had openly taken the support of Dera chief Gurmeet Ram Rahim and his son-in-law, former Congress MLA Harminder Singh Jassi. The Dera has considerable support base among the Dalits in the Malwa region of the state, perhaps why the Ranjit Singh
THE SIT GOOF-UP AND THE HC JUDGMENT IN THE 2015 DESECRATION CASE COULD COST AMARINDER THE PANTHIC VOTES
report got a quiet burial.
After the HC verdict, the SAD is now claiming their stand has been vindicated, but other opposition parties like the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP), the (Sukhdev) Dhindsa-led SAD (Democratic) and the BJP are railing against Amarinder for playing politics and allowing the perpetrators to get away. On April 30, all the Sikh Panthic factions–except the Badal unit—are to gather at Kotkapura town to burn copies of the high court order.
Even as Amarinder was dealing with the political fallout, his IGP (Inspector General of Police) Kunwar Vijay Pratap, who was heading the SIT, put in his papers. The court’s adverse comments while dissolving the SIT— that the investigation report was based on the IGP’s “fantasies” and asking for his removal from the case—probably led to the resignation. Amarinder is now accused of “going soft” on the Badal family. An official spokesperson of the Punjab government rubbished these allegations, pointing to how the HC decision is being challenged in superior courts and a fresh SIT is now working the case.
But the Captain’s troubles don’t end here. Party legislators, including several cabinet ministers, have complained to the Congress high command about Amarinder and his coterie not taking them into confidence on crucial issues such as state government policies, disbursal of development funds and even political appointments to state bodies. This, along with the SIT fiasco, could lose him the Panthic voters who had backed him in 2017.
Riding the emotional desecration issue (along with the drug menace and corruption allegations), the Congress and AAP had successfully weaned away a huge chunk of the SAD’s core Panthic voters. In the 2019 general election, Amarinder further consolidated the support of this influential vote bank, which had moved en masse to the Congress. The desecration issue has resurfaced at an inconvenient juncture for the Captain, with the state heading to polls in February 2022. It will also disrupt the momentum of his efforts to build bridges with party rivals ahead of the election.